On Monday I had a soft taco from Taco Bell for lunch. It was nothing extraordinary, but it sparked a memory from the past.
Growing up in Littleton, CO, I didn’t spend much time with my father. This was a combination of him not being home until late in the evening and me not wanting to. When we did spend time together, it was usually brief and we usually did something that was seemingly unimportant.
I remember going to the mall with him one time and stopping off at the fairly new Taco Bell inside the mall. They had poster ads for a new product, something called the Soft Taco. We just had to try them.
They came in these cool pocket-wrappers, to hold the good stuff that might fall out of the taco. Wow, were they good! It was hard to imagine that nobody had made these before.
I don’t recall how many I had that day, or what Dad & I talked about, but I remember sharing this experience with him. I wish I’d taken more opportunities to share positive experiences with him. I regret that I had not.
Soft Tacos are a sore subject in our family now. While working at Arby’s, Tassie & Jacquie had seen a bit of trivia on one of the Taco Bell tray liners that stated someone had eaten a huge number of them in an hour…I think it was 14, Tassie thinks it was 21, but it was big.
Jacquie made some bet that Tassie couldn’t match that number. Tassie called her on it and so Jacquie went and bought the tacos.
While on shift, in-between customers, Tassie began eating taco after taco. They went down quickly at first, but were soon to slow. It was, obviously, a struggle.
It took the full hour, but Tassie ate every single taco that she needed to. I’m not confident that she kept them all down, though.
To this day, some 20 years later, Tassie still hates soft tacos. :-)